


Bloodlines

by esama



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Animal Death, Blood Magic, Do not repost, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Necromancy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, William Miles Being an Asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 17:17:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19277857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: Magic runs in their blood. Death runs in their blood. From what Desmond knows, it's kind of one and the same.





	Bloodlines

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by nimadge, many thanks
> 
> Warning for death of animals and Bill Miles A+ Parenting

Abstergo has him in a rune circle before he even wakes up, strapped down with iron chains like some sort of human sacrifice of old, about to be sacrificed to Old Gods.

"We know who you are – _what_ you are, master Miles," the warlock, Vidic, says. Or maybe he's an alchemist or something – the white coat is kind of throwing Desmond off, especially next to the book he'd holding. It's a real Tome of a book too, with metal and gems on the cover. "There is much we can learn from you."

"I'm a bartender, I work at a bar," Desmond grinds out. "What do you want me to do, teach you how to mix a brew?"

"Don't be ridiculous. You are a Necromancer, and whether you like it or not, we will have what's in that precious blood of yours," Vidic says and turns to his assistant, pretty blonde woman with conflicted expression. "Let's begin."

* * *

 

Bad Weather was more than a bar though. You don't survive as a business in New York by being just one thing – though the city is young as cities go, it's still hungry, and its youth just makes it that much more cruel in its hunger. You have to be a bit bitter to keep the city from swallowing you up, you have to be a bit sour, and just maybe you'll become one of New York's fangs instead of a morsel disappearing down its endless gullet.

Bad Weather was like that. Sweet on the surface and sour underneath, serving people with a smile up front before leading them to the back door for other, less gentile services. They fixed up whatever people wanted. A little bit of forgetfulness, a little bit of bliss, a potion or two on the side, a banned book under the table and a carved bone knife through the back door. Not death though, Desmond wouldn't have stayed working there if they dealt with death in any capacity.

He did ask about it once.

"What, like scrying and shit?" Mike asked while they loaded up bottles, booze or elixir, Desmond can't tell – the bottles look the same. "Fuck, man. I pride myself in providing services that actually work. Never met a psychic that wasn't full of crap, with seances and shit."

"Yeah," Desmond says, carefully agreeable. "But you do potions, what about poisons and stuff? You sell ritual knives – how about blood magic?"

"I ain't about that shit. Creeps me the fuck out, blood magic. 'Sides, it's too traceable and there'd be hell to pay if some poison got tracked here. Think I'll just stick to a bit of bottled up bliss."

Fair enough.

* * *

 

Altaïr takes out the blood soaked feather, still wet but not staining – the feather has done its job and it's holding onto the blood. Holding onto the essence.

With the Blood of the Dying you can do many things. Draw back their soul from beyond. Manipulate their corpse, no matter how far away it was buried, even reanimate it. See and hear through its ears. Destroy it.

You could also scry the dead's life, see their memories.

In Masyaf there are many such feathers, but few as powerful as the ones Altaïr is collecting now. Leaders of men, merchant kings and slavers, warriors and generals, grand masters of their orders. He kills them, collects their Dying Blood and takes it back to his master, for Al Mualim to do with as he wished.

What does his master collect the dead for, he wonders?

* * *

 

Death runs in their blood. They can raise the dead, they can raise the living to the ground.

That doesn't mean they can bring the dead back to _life_. Not really.

* * *

 

"Why isn't it working?! Miss Stillman, explain this!"

"I – I don't I know. This worked with Subject Sixteen – maybe Desmond's blood is more potent somehow – I don't know. I think we need to recalibrate the sigil balance-"

Desmond lies on the runes, eyes shut and swallowing around the cloying scent of blood in the back of his throat. It has such a distinctive taste. He's almost missed it.

Fucked up as it is, it makes him a little homesick.

"Get him up and take him back to his cell!" Vidic snaps to the guards, and Desmond is hauled up.

* * *

 

When Desmond was eight, he took a rabbit.

His father called it hunting, and in broad terms it was. Half a dozen teenagers with crossbows raising hell up the mountain, chasing all the animal tracts they could find, hoping to bring home a prize. Together they made enough noise to make sure none of them would find anything.

But Desmond did. Only he didn't. He wandered off from the others following a butterfly, and found a trap, and in that trap there was a live animal. It had been there for a while, too, trapped by its paw – its pain hung in the air like tangy miasma, clinging to its skin.

Desmond could tell, just by the scent of it, that it would die. He could let it go, but it would die anyway, the rabbit's paw was broken and infected and it would die.

So Desmond puts it out of its misery.

"It doesn't count!" the others complain. "He didn't hunt it, he just found it, he didn't even set up the trap."

"I did the thing," Desmond says. "I killed something – wasn't that what I was supposed to do? So I won."

"You did kill something," his dad agrees slowly, watching him closely. "Tell me son, how did it feel?"

He didn't know then why his father was asking - what it might look like, for an eight year old boy to just up and kill a wounded defenceless animal. He thought his dad was asking about the rabbit, and so he answered honestly.

"Better. It felt better."

That, Desmond thinks later, is where it all began.

* * *

 

In his cell, Desmond brushes his fingers through the rabbit's brown fur and wonders what the fuck even is his life.

Though really, the more interesting question is what would happen once he died. Which, considering the kidnapping and vaguely necromantic blood rituals, is getting more and more likely here. He thinks they are trying to summon something. That usually leads to the death of the sacrifice, doesn't it?

"You know, if you told me what it actually is that you want from me, maybe I could just, you know… give it to you," Desmond comments and looks through the bars of his cell at Lucy, who's watching him.

"I don't think you can," she says. "Not willingly."

"I could try," Desmond offers wryly. "I've been told I'm a very giving person."

She smiles despite herself, but it's a wincing, painful sort of smile. "You ran away from home, right? How much do you know about your family?"

"Enough to have ran away from them. I'm thinking you mean something other than the cult setting though."

Lucy looks a little uncomfortable at that. "Well – long ago one of your ancestors made a – a pact, we think, with an Old God. It bound your family's blood within itself – so that no one but direct descendants can summon or manipulate the members of their family."

"Yeah, heard something about that."

"Legend has it the deal backfired," Lucy says slowly.

Desmond snorts and closes his eyes. "Heard something about that too, yeah."

* * *

 

It wasn't an Old God, though, not with Altaïr. It was an artefact, a sphere of gold, the Apple of Eden.

It was the sight of Al Mualim wielding it and summoning every man whose blood Altaïr had brought to him, every enemy whom Altaïr had killed for him, every bit of trust Altaïr had expended on him.

"With this," Al Mualim says, lifting the Apple aloft. "I will turn our enemies to tools, and all those who would oppose peace and order will fall in line, in life or in death."

It's nothing Altaïr hadn't seen magicians do before – wizards make men do their bidding all the time, living or dead. But the completeness of it is a perversion he can't accept – the dead men look whole and alive and perfect, indistinguishable from the living. No one and nothing should be raised from death so perfectly. That's not a power any human should possess.

It turns out to be an illusion in the end, their perfect health, one that fades when he slays Al Mualim – but the horror of it lingers. It's then Altaïr swears – no one would ever again be able to raise what he killed.

And yes, that did indeed ultimately backfire.

But the curse about their blood being beyond manipulations but by those _of_ their blood – that came from another source.

* * *

 

By the time Desmond leaves the Farm… no, that's not how it went. By the time Desmond _escapes_ the Farm and the cultish life within it, he thinks he understands what they're trying to make him into. He also thinks they have no idea what they're making him into.

He thinks later that neither side had any idea of what was actually going on. Neither does Vidic.

But in either case, by the time he runs away, he lives within a multitude of souls. The first rabbit is there, sometimes inside him and sometimes outside, hopping around, blissfully incapable of understanding its new existence. It keeps trying to eat vegetables, the poor thing – though what it makes him, for having spent so long trying to feed it, he doesn't know. By the time he's ten, he's figured out the thing didn't need to be fed, so whatever. In either case, it isn't alone.

There are other rabbits, there's a deer, birds, fish, even one dog, whom Desmond put down under his father's watchful eye, while Bill was still trying to figure out whether he was mentally disturbed or not. There's a hawk that grew from the chick that fell from its nest and died in Desmond's hands, there's a boar which took half of the Farm to chase down and kill.

By the time he was twelve, Bill made sure that if there was killing to be done around the Farm, Desmond would be the one to do it. The younger novices would get their taste of death when they needed it for their training, but outside it, it would be Desmond.

"Desmond, there's a rat in a trap in the barn, go kill it."

"Desmond, there's a wounded deer in the forest, go track it down and deal with it."

"Desmond, we found a bird that flew into the windows, come put it down."

Later, once he's ran far enough to stop and think, he wonders why. Was there a reason or was his dad just a fucking monster? What did Bill hope to get out of it? Was he trying to figure it out, did he know that each thing Desmond killed stayed with him, did he try to puzzle it out? Or was he just training Desmond to be a fucking serial killer? Or an Assassin? A damn Necromancer, _really?_

"Magic is in your blood," his father used to say. "Use it."

Honestly, Desmond preferred the theology lessons about the Creed, or whatever those even were.

* * *

 

"The theory goes that the youngest member of the lineage can control the entire lineage – living and dead members both. And all they have ever killed!" Vidic says, pacing back and forth. "That's how it goes! That's how it was written in the Codex! And master Miles here _is_ the youngest member! So why isn't this working?!"

Lucy looks between him and Desmond on the altar. "Maybe," she says, horrified, "He isn't the youngest member. Maybe William Miles had another child – or Desmond did?"

Or maybe, Desmond thinks, they're both idiots and the words _only members of the bloodline can control the bloodline_ actually mean something.

He looks to the side, to the figure crouched beside him, making his usually solitary existence in the rune circle feel downright crowded.

"Templars have not changed much, have they?" Altaïr comments, looking around them curiously - very solid and very verbal and for all the world to see very real. "They still think they can control what will not be."

Desmond looks to where Vidic and Lucy are arguing - neither of them is in any way reacting to the sudden inclusion to their company.

"Like all things that linger in your soul," Altaïr says, while reaching out and marveling at the hawk that's always trying to break out of Desmond's chest and into flight, "I too am invisible until you bring me forward."

Desmond let's his head thunk down on the circle with a sigh and says nothing. He can feel Altaïr watching him though. Can feel him inside his _soul._

"Take him back to his cell," Vidic snaps eventually. "I need to think about this… Another ancestor perhaps…"

* * *

 

Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted.

What does that even mean, in connection to what they are – whatever that even is? Something along the lines of "laws of nature aren't real, break them as you will" maybe?

Desmond thinks about it a lot in his first years on the run – thinks about many of the edicts which didn't ever make much sense to him. Thinks about himself. About his plethora of souls. Alone, he's occupied by a half a wildlife sanctuary's worth of animals. And enough rats to start a plague. What the hell does that even mean? What is he supposed to do with them – is he supposed to do anything with them?

It isn't until three years in, when working in a dingy little supermarket, that he meets a witch and gets to finally name the… condition. The witch is followed by cats. Lots and lots of cats – every single one of them dead, except for one.

"Oh, don't you mind him, he's just my familiar," she says, kissing the very resigned living cat on the head. "Isn't he just the most precious?"

"Familiar?" Desmond asks.

"Of course a familiar. Can't very well be a witch without a familiar, can I?"

She's happy to tell him all about it in that mostly empty supermarket at 3am – how ever since she was a little girl she would find suitable cats and bind them to herself to do her witchy business with. By now, at age of approaching eighty, she's had more than twenty cats.

She doesn't know each and every one of them is still hanging around. Desmond regrets not telling her about them, later, after she's paid and left, but at the time he's more curious about what you can actually do with familiars.

* * *

 

"Did you ever… you know," Desmond makes a hand gesture at Altaïr. "Use them?"

Altaïr strokes the hawk, sitting against the other end of the cell. "I did. Later in life. But never my targets – only the Assassins I killed."

"You – what?" Altaïr had killed his _own people?_

Altaïr sighs and bows his head. "Yes. Perhaps one day you will learn why – and why I felt justified in using them. You know our edicts. Stay your blade from the blood of the innocent."

"Yeah," Desmond agrees slowly. One of the few parts of the Creed and tenets he's both fully agreed with – and also never followed. What are animals and wild creatures but innocents?

Altaïr looks at him like he knows, like he understands. "It applies to the opposite as well."

"What, stay life from the blood of the guilty?" Desmond asks, arcing his brows.

Altaïr smirks, wry. "Just so."

It's a bit of a moot point. There were no people within Desmond – not before Altaïr. For all the life he's spilled before he was even old enough to drink, none of it was human. His dad wasn't _that_ fucked up, at least – though who knows how far off they were from it.

Altaïr doesn't seem to mind the company, but the fact that he's there at all is weird. Desmond didn't kill him either. Altaïr died like eight hundred years ago.

"For that you have another to thank for," Altaïr says. "And I think you will learn of him very soon."

* * *

 

Desmond didn't learn magic. It wasn't a choice made out of conviction or anything, he didn't really have any ethical difficulty with it nor was it a point of pride, going against his father's wishes. He just couldn't see how it would improve his life in any way, to know magic. Actually, it would probably make things that much worse for him.

That said, he knows what it means, power-wise, to have so many familiars. They might be all dead and untrained – only the dog will sometimes do what he tells it to do – but they're still familiars. Spirits connected to his soul, under his power. Sort of. Even if he doesn't know how to take full advantage of them, someone else might. And that was before even getting into potential human familiars.

There's only like a handful of recorded cases in history of people with human familiars, according to all the experts. Most of them were necromancers. Most of them went nuts.

His dad, Desmond knows, hasn't any. His mother though… There's probably a reason why she'd never been an active Assassin. Desmond hasn't ever thought about it, he didn't know it was an inherited ability and that Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad himself was _just like him_ … he didn't ever even consider that his mother might've been like him.

But in that case – could she see them, the rabbit he brought out to play with, the dog, the deer, the others?

Did she know? Did she tell dad? And if they did know – why hadn't they ever said anything? Why hadn't they ever said it was alright?

Why hadn't anyone ever said _anything?_

* * *

 

"Desmond," Lucy whispers. "Come on – there's not much time. Were getting out of here."

"Lucy, what –?"

"Vidic is going to kill you, Desmond, to use your blood – we need to go. Now – come on. Get on the circle."

"Excuse me?" Desmond asks.

"We need to make sure he can't use the circle on you at a distance – now get on it so that I can bring it with us!"

Desmond stares at her for a moment in complete confusion, but she looks so urgent and afraid that in the end he gets on the circle – wishing that he had learned magic after all, if only enough to understand what the hell is going on.

Then the rune circle burns itself into his skin, and it's probably only his lack of understanding that keeps him from flipping his shit right there and then. He thinks he sees someone in the burning, a man in white lifting his head in the shadows, eyes gleaming dangerously, _who dares…?_

The floor under Desmond is completely unmarked after – every mark upon it transferred to his skin.

"Lucy, what the _fuck_?" he demands.

"There's no time to explain – come on, we have to run."

And as much as Desmond would love to stay and question her, she's right – already he can hear the sound of running footsteps, coming their way. So, cursing, he runs. Altaïr follows him, silent and unseen and completely alert. The hawk flies ahead of them – and how about that, a familiar taming another familiar? If that's even what Altaïr is.

The hell is even happening?

"There will be fighting," Altaïr says, running at his side, surprisingly heavy for an insubstantial ghost. "There are guards."

"Great, that's just great," Desmond mutters, steeling himself mentally. If he would have to fight, if he would have to _kill…_ shit.

Altaïr looks at him as they run, keeping pace without any problems. "Bring me forth if you must," he says. "I will protect you."

Desmond casts him an incredulous look.

"You are my descendant," Altaïr says firmly. "I will protect you."

Ahead of them Lucy runs into the guards and throws a handful of runes at them, turning them into smoke in midair. In the ensuing chaos, she takes out a man with his own baton – and then another. Desmond gapes for a moment, surprised – he thought that she was just a magician, but that was some proper physical fighting. And not shabby one at that.

"Damn, Lucy," he says while Altaïr hums, grim and interested.

"Desmond, come _on_ ," Lucy snaps and sets out again.

So, they run.

* * *

 

Altaïr wasn't a magician either. He knew enough of magic to use magical tools and avoid magical threats, but despite what all the history books said, he was never a Necromancer. He was an Assassin. He learned some magic later on, enough to earn himself titles and reputation, enough to accomplish the near impossible, but he was always a warrior first and foremost.

Ezio Auditore, on the other hand...


End file.
